Topic: Unpopular Gaming Opinions

I will say my fondness for battle mode is mostly based on 64 and DS. I'm sure its really cool in 8 Deluxe but I got 8 Deluxe during the booster course pass era not the "oh thank god a real battle mode for 8 this time" era.

@Anti-Matter "People who don't love open worlds only love Nintendo games, and don't like 3rd party games"
I have no idea where you are coming up with that conclusion. I like a lot of 3rd party games/series: Crash Bandicoot, Tomb Raider, Rayman, Resident Evil, (Classic) DOOM, Sonic The Hedgehog, Braid, Pizza Tower, Bully, Grand Theft Auto. Hell, I'm a PC gamer first and foremost. I sold off my Switch a year ago, and I'm still waiting for a reason to buy the Switch 2 yet.

I didn't play too much open world games besides Breath of the Wild and its sequel, but I feel like they aren't as replayable as other, smaller games, if that makes sense. I played a bit of the Switch 2 edition of BotW (thanks to me having the expansion pack), and I haven't got back to it in a while. Mainly because I finished the original game a couple years ago, and how massive Hyrule is. I tried out master mode too, and it's been difficult for me. On the other hand, I've been replaying Link's Awakening and I still want to keep going (provided that I have the time of course, haha). I do try to play through games that are new to me, but I do like replaying old favorites as well. I like rewatching my favorite movies too, or having them in the background while I play my Switch 2.

Similarly to @kkslider5552000, I like the battle modes from the older Mario Kart games the best. I like the whole "get hit three times and you're out" thing more than just how many points you'd get in the newer games. While I do think Super Mario Kart is a bit rough to come back to, its battle mode is still great fun. Same with Mario Kart 64. I have not tried out Mario Kart World's battle mode yet.

On the topic, I love both linear and open world experiences.

But the thing that bugs me in many games is the lack of environmental story telling. It is like reading a book and letting your imagination piece the parts together of what actually happened.

This is done in less and less games every year. It is like most gamers or devs thing that an area/building etc. is useless if there is not a quest or some kind of NPC there.

I couldn't care less with upcoming Switch 2 game Kirby Direct.
It doesn't look like the game I want to play.

@Anti-Matter do you really need to make this known?

@Anti-Matter um ok. Thanks for letting us know.

I saw someone recently basically implying that Gamefreak should stop trying to make AAA games altogether. I probably agree.

I don't feel as strongly about this as some takes, but like...if Gamefreak just made smaller 40 dollar games forever and not worry about open world or modern 3D graphics or other obligations to justify Pokemon games being AAA 60-70 dollar games (either make more stylized 3D models without raising the polygon count or whatever or just straight up go back to 2D), I'd prefer it. I don't actively want a 60 dollar Pokemon game, so they should both stop trying to make 60 dollar AAA Pokemon games and then also sell them at 40 like they should be if they're not trying to be AAA in the first place (which nowadays is arguably just preferable in general tbh).

While I do want B/W remakes to be in the style similar to HD-2D, if gen 10 was like that I'd probably be more interested than whatever gen 10 will actually be, even IF still a full priced game, let alone if not.

The only argument I have against this is that A. Legends Arceus seems cool and B. Gamefreak could create an entire new 400+ Pokemon dev team just to make new AAA Pokemon games and still be wildly profitable anyway and the games would be better if they did this. Like they want to be AAA without...being an actual AAA game studio, it seems like just a bad idea, so they should pick a lane. Be a giant AAA game studio or stop trying to make AAA games.

About the subject of Gamefreak going back to making simpler / 2D Pokémon games again, I wouldn't mind them doing that if they went back to the new Gen every 3 years schedule, as someone whose favorite franchise is Pokémon, I would love that actually 🤣. Then again, the openworld Pokémon Violet is my favorite game ever, so... what am I even saying... 🤣

In general, I think its understated how much more graphically impressive games don't automatically look better. Technically modern Pokemon games could not even have a chance of running on older Nintendo handhelds, they are objectively more impressive. You'll never convince me modern Pokemon games look better than the DS games. The DS games are better looking, I'd rather be looking at 4th or 5th gen than 8th or 9th. Gamefreak is spending more money to make games I truly believe look worse, I hate the very idea of it.

This is not a new or even interesting opinion, but I have no interest in games that take so much more to make and look worse. Megaman 8 on PS1 looks better than Megaman 11 on Switch, Mario World on SNES looks better than NSMBU, Wind Waker on Gamecube looks better than your average unreal engine 5 game. And I don't even hate games for not looking amazing, I grew up on N64, that's fine, if a game is great it doesn't matter. But its just such a waste of time to take something appealing and make it boring and mid. Even for games I think look great in a lot of ways like Metroid Dread could learn something from Super Metroid in terms of art direction.

It is either pointless in general, or is done to (sometimes) successfully pander to gamers who have no respect for interesting and 2d art styles, either way, I hate it.

@kkslider5552000 As someone that didn't like the trailers and promo material for Z-A at all, now that I'm playing it on Switch 2, I totally "get" it. The crisp image (I don't see a hint of upscaling here) and perfect smooth performance is worth the reduced geometric complexity. I don't even notice the lack of details on some buildings until I specifically look for it, because the gameplay is so good, and it feels better when performance is this nice.

Obviously in an ideal world we would get everything in one game: Native image resolution without upscaling; perfect 60fps; the best graphics possible on the system; and innovative and genuinely great gameplay.

But I think in a practical world, this seldom works out. Even BotW which I'd say is as close to that as anyone's gotten, had to cut back on the image resolution drastically, and performance wasn't great a lot of the time.

Z-A I feel like prioritizes creative, innovative gameplay and game design above all else, and then gets to the desired and really great atmosphere and vibes without pushing either system too hard, making for a game that runs well on Switch 1 and runs perfect on Switch 2, as well as looking crystal clear in handheld. And the creativity in game design can be afforded when they haven't sunk 10x the funds on fancier graphics, which would make this riskier to do.

Can't really look at these things in isolation, I think. I've been reflecting on this a lot, as I've been enjoying the game and thinking about how much it's changed my own opinion.

I have truly no opinion of the newest Pokemon game, but I will say from what I've seen it is the first Pokemon RPG since the Let's Go games where it reliably looks fine and am mildly confused at the backlash to it because of that. (unless its just like...too little too late after the past few games for people)

I'm not even a Pokemon fan but honestly, you're far better served by mid-budget games than wanting parity with AAA extravaganzas.

Inside a wider industry of exploding budgets, job losses and studio closures, Nintendo have been a relative island of calm, at any rate.

@kkslider5552000 also I think game freak deliberately doesn't want to go AAA game, but AA... Which is also priced the same as other AAA stuff. (Atelier, stuff like Crymachina too for example)

Overall I personally love ZA though and it feels so good. The story gets better the further you get (I just finished Rank D -> C fight yesterday and it was awesome!) too.

Nintendo Switch OLED is the best Nintendo thing that was ever made.

Looking at Pokemon legends Z-A Switch 1 version with worse fps outselling switch 2 version, I just smh to see that choice.
I'm not really a Pokemon fan, I couldn't care less with their sales currently as I do agree with other opinion about people will buy Pokemon games regardless of their quality, even they are worse than other games which have better quality. It just made me sad to see popularity can blinded people into blind loyalty without critical thinking and common sense.
Pokemon franchise itself I admitted it is cute franchise, but their popularity kinda bothering me at some point and it made me think the underrated similar franchise like Yokai Watch looked more appealing for me than Pokemon.
I'm glad I don't follow certain popularity so I know which is better for me.

Also, I personally choose PAW PATROL Rescue Wheels Championship on PS5 over than new Kirby racing game on Switch 2.

I couldn't care less with the hype of new Kirby racing game, even the gameplay trailer I had ever watched before was too fuzzy.
Oh, well.
I feel better by considering unpopular stuffs than the too popular stuffs.

I mean there's like 15 times as many people who own a Switch 1 compared to Switch 2. Of course it's going to sell better on Switch 1.

And it's worth remembering that most people who play these games do not care about framerate. They'll notice it if it's really bad (which, in Legends Z-A on Switch 1, it isn't, at least based on the little bit I've played so far) but the majority of Pokemon's audience would probably look at you blankly if you asked them how many frames per second they expect a game to run at. Honestly I'm pretty much the same - I don't really think about framerate unless it's either noticeably bad or it's in the context of a conversation on websites like this one. I don't think that's a lack of 'critical thinking', people just have different priorities for what they want from a game.

@Anti-Matter it's perfectly fine to like popular things. It's even fine to like unpopular things. But acting like unpopular things are better simply because they're unpopular is with all due respect, a pretty limiting and petty mindset.

@Dogorilla
But I have higher standard and better taste.
I do care with better fps considering this is not 20 years ago when the games mostly struggled getting better fps.
And that's why my hype with Switch 1 gradually decreased as PS5 with 60 fps for 3rd party kids games I played set the bar really really high.
I simply don't want to play games with worse fps when I can play the same games on the other version with better fps.
It's just wasting my money and really worthless purchase for me.